


To the First of Many, Sourwolf

by Akinasky



Series: All Our Firsts [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Comforting Stiles Stilinski, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, One Shot, Sick Derek, Valentine's Day Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-15
Updated: 2017-04-15
Packaged: 2018-10-19 07:19:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10634994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akinasky/pseuds/Akinasky
Summary: Derek and Stiles try to have their first V-Day together.





	

**Author's Note:**

> As you may have guessed, Valentine's Day is now in April. ;)

“Scott!!” Stiles whined at his best friend, throwing his hands down in annoyance as the werewolf wandered through the store, looking for something for Kira. Valentine’s Day was here and they were among the many dudes hanging out in the stores looking for a crucial romantic last minute gift and Stiles was not enjoying the show. Mostly because he was a little late to the party and he really wanted to do something nice for his Valentine as well.

“What are you whining about Stiles, look at it this way, he’s not going to want anything a girl would want. A dude has got to be easier than a girl. Right?”

Stiles thinks about his boyfriend, they were still so new and he didn’t want to screw this up. He’d known Derek Hale a long time, they had been through everything under the sun but when Stiles saw him again when the other werewolf returned to town, Stiles knew that he would have to at least take a chance for something more than friendship. He wouldn’t keep waiting, not knowing.

And he did. Take a chance and find out the answer. He’d walked right up to the werewolf, grabbed him by the lapels of his signature leather jacket and dragged him close, much like the werewolf once had so many years ago in the teenager’s bedroom. Now they were years older, and Stiles was tired of waiting.

He pressed a kiss to Derek’s lips and waited as the other man stood frozen, his arms pressed into Stiles’s shoulders in surprise but not actively shoving him away. Stiles started counting seconds.

_One Mississippi._

_Two Mississippi._

_Three Mississippi._

Derek still didn’t push Stiles away so he shifted a little and sank into the feel of even a closed mouthed kiss of his years-long crush and _finally_ Derek softened and brought Stiles close to deepen the kiss. Stiles realized very quickly that he’d lost all semblance of dominance in the embrace when Derek pulled him closer, dragging his arms around Stiles’s back and it went on deliciously for _days_ before Derek pulled back and asked, “So you like me?”

Stiles snorted, reaching out with sarcasm mostly because he didn’t know any other way of dealing with semi emotional times and that moment was emotional, even now when he was just thinking about it. He’d been so wrapped up in the idea of Derek not feeling the same and taking the chance and _how stupid_ he was to just grab and kiss a guy that had been gone for years, “Nope, I just kiss every person I come across, especially werewolves.”

The pain that flashed across Derek’s features made Stiles sober quickly, “Sorry no, that’s not what I meant!” he said with his arms flailing around even as Derek started to pull away, “I really like you Derek and I have missed you and would you like to go on a date with me?”

Derek smiled and his hands returned to Stiles’s hips, the expression wasn’t much and his head dropped like he was embarrassed by the facial expression but the human just pressed his finger to the underside of his werewolf’s chin and brought his gaze back up. Yeah, he could work with this, Stiles thought with a grin.

They did go on a date, and another… and now they had been dating for six months and it was Valentine’s Day and he wanted to get something for his Sourwolf otherwise the guy was just going to let the day go by. Derek didn’t even want to talk to Stiles about the romantic holiday but he wasn’t going to give up. This was a mission to make sure that for once in his life, Derek knew that someone wanted him around and just wanted him to smile and be happy.

The suck-fest part of this was that Stiles couldn’t be romantic if someone paid him to be.

Scott ended up with a stuffed fox to which Stiles rolled his eyes hard, with a box of chocolates and Stiles kept looking around the area. He found a silly card about puppy love and some caramels candies (Derek doesn’t like chocolate to which Stiles had declared _‘Well yeah chocolate would just make you sick then we would have to take you to the vet’_ , Derek response was an eye roll of epic Hale proportions and _‘Really? Dog jokes?’_ )

That had been a great day, with Derek chasing Stiles around the loft before tackling him into the bed and making out forever. And it was just one more thing he’d learned about the person that he loved.

Loved.

God, he loved Derek Hale and he’d been hoping that tonight after the dinner was consumed and they’d made out until he couldn’t feel his lips anymore he was going to tell him. He might even have a special surprise for his sweet werewolf.

 

 _‘Happy Valentine’s Day Sourwolf, I have a surprise for you to mark the occasion of our first V-Day together.’_ Derek looked at the stupid little text with the ridiculous little emoji hearts all around it and really shouldn’t be so stupid happy about it but he was. He didn’t know what to expect with this holiday, hadn’t done anything about it in too long to even remember.

What he didn’t think would happen was a knock on the door of the loft, frowning as he walked across the open expanse and slid open the door to find no one. “Hello?” he called before he looked around then down to find a vase full of flowers.

“Flowers? Really Stiles?” he asked his absent boyfriend, wondering why the delivery guy hadn’t waited for a tip or anything. He took a deep breath but could only detect the smell of flowers and he didn’t care about the type. There were a few red roses and then some green blooms of different sizes and shapes. There was a little card and he picked up the whole thing to bring it inside. He took a deep breath of the smell, hoping to catch the scent of his sweet spastic boyfriend but it wasn’t there. He probably paid for someone to put it together and drop if off. He sniffled and sneezed a little then put the vase down on his table to grab the card which simply said, ‘For my Valentine’ which was much more sappy and stupid than anything Stiles had said so far about the day but apparently today was the day for sappy talk.

Too bad he sucked at it.

It wasn’t too long before he was going to see his younger boyfriend but he had to do some cooking and get the table set so he didn’t text Stiles about the flowers, he could say thank you in person even though this whole thing was so over the top ridiculous that he couldn’t even imagine saying thank you about a bunch of flowers without one of the girls here to curb his ‘dude-ness’ as they liked to call it. Lydia had already been by this morning to lay out his best outfit according to her and he was planning to change into just as the dinner was finished cooking.

Only for Stiles had ever wanted to dress well and see those amber eyes light with pleasure and happiness. This feeling had not been in his future until Stiles walked up to him and laid one on him when he first arrived back in town over six months ago.

He was getting everything set when the sniffles started and about ten minutes later he was coughing, a little bit here and there. He just shook it off and kept cooking when suddenly, without any warning from his senses the door slammed open and Stiles was standing there in the doorway like some weird Avenger who forgot his costume (Yes, Stiles makes Derek watch them).

“Stiles, you’re early. I’m not ready yet.”

“Good, I wouldn’t want you to waste any more time on an evening that isn’t going to happen.”

Derek frowned, “Excuse me?”

“You think I could ever want you!” Stiles shouted and Derek flinched, his worst nightmare come to life so quickly he didn’t know how to keep breathing through the whiplash. He took a step closer, his hand held out in a desperate plea for something, some reason or something he could fix.

“Stiles? What’s going on?”

“I want to live Derek, and you’re just going to get me killed. Killed!”

Derek took a deep breath, trying to figure out what the hell was happening right now, he couldn’t smell Stiles’s scent. It was like there was nothing there. He coughed again just as Stiles took another step closer and continued speaking.

“You got your family killed because you couldn’t keep your dick in your pants, I can’t lose anyone else. You’re not worth this!”

“Stiles!” Derek groaned as he rushed across the wide expanse and tried to grab Stiles by the arm and he didn’t touch anything as Stiles disappeared and he coughed again. “What the hell is happening to me?” he demanded, throwing his arms out in a wide arc. He turned back to the kitchen, weaving a little on his feet and coughing again and it was a wet sound and he didn’t want to know what was being spewed out of his mouth. He held his hand up and coughed again, trying to force out whatever was bothering his throat without avail.

Then Stiles was there again, arms crossed and looking belligerently at Derek. “You think you could ever be family again? You think you could ever be as important as Scott and my Dad ever have been?”

Derek swung out towards the flowers, wanting to rip something apart and despite what Stiles was saying, he would never do anything to hurt the younger man. The vase went shattering to the ground and there was a puff of something floated into the air as Stiles kept screaming at him.

“STOP STILES!” Derek shouted, his eyes bleeding red and his claws dropping something he had never done with his boyfriend. He wondered if he was going feral, if he was going crazy. Why would Stiles do this to him? Not that anything the younger human was saying was incorrect. Derek had gotten people he loved killed. He just didn’t understand why this was all of a sudden an issue for Stiles when they had known each other for years and Derek had shared everything with him. He didn’t want to lose his boyfriend, he couldn’t imagine life without Stiles now. He didn’t want to.

Derek had already lost to much, and he’d taken a chance with Stiles and he should have known better.

The werewolf started coughing again, wheezing as he tried to pull air into his lungs but couldn’t seem to. He stumbled towards the couch but didn’t make it, crumpling to the ground before he’d made it a few steps.

 

Stiles ran his hands down over his dark blue Henley and took a deep breath. The shirt was something Derek had bought for him a little over a week ago as a joke but it had turned out looking great and Derek’s eyes would glaze over when he wore it. He grabbed the candy and the card, grabbed his signature red jacket, something of an upgrade from his sweaters from high school but still very much a part of his wardrobe. He headed out and took the drive over the Derek’s place and wondered why this stupid Hallmark holiday had the power to make him a nervous wreck when he’d been dating an alpha werewolf for months now.

He quickly put aside what undoubtedly could a week-long train of thought as he jogged up the stairs and standing outside the loft door and knocked and waited. Stiles frowned when it didn’t open automatically and knocked again, the sound of the dull thudding under his knuckles sounding loud in the stairwell. “Derek, you in there?”

He didn’t hear anything, reaching out to tug on the door handle and it slid open. Derek rarely kept the place locked because he’d had the place broken into so many times and he’d gotten sick of fixing it. Stiles pushed it open and peered into the loft, finding a messy of a potted plant all over the floor and a slightly burning smell from the kitchen and Derek on the ground, still and hopefully breathing.

“Derek!” he shouted as he threw himself across the open space and down next to his boyfriend. He immediately reached into his pocket and dragged out his cellphone and thought about all his friends and their plans. He groaned as he tilted Derek’s head up a little and pressed a hand to the side of the other man’s throat. The pulse he found there was hammering, though he didn’t know what he was even looking for here.

“Hey Derek, you’re burning dinner! You know how I feel about burning good food.”

The werewolf groaned and Stiles looked around, trying to figure out what the hell this was. What did they do? What did he need to do now to take care of Derek? He thought about Deaton then remembered the veterinarian was out of town so that was no good. He was undoubtedly going to ruin someone’s plans but he didn’t know what was happening so he didn’t know who to call.

Leaning down, he pressed his head into Derek’s warm chest and listened intently, he closed his eyes and waited. The alpha was breathing, his heart beat was thudding along but his breathing was labored and slow and that seemed incorrect all by itself. He sat up enough to look at his boyfriend’s face, and noticed that the eyes were jumping back and forth like he was trapped in a dream.

Stiles reached down and scooped his hands under the edges of Derek’s well-formed shoulder blades and lifted him a little bit. There was water soaking the rug beneath Derek’s body and it scrubbed into Stiles’s knuckles, rasping into the spaces between his fingers. He held Derek up a little and tried to see if the different position would help to wake him or maybe help with his breathing, anything really.

It wasn’t until he started feeling the raw tingling sensation in his knuckles that he even started to gain a conclusion. He moved Derek over to lay his head and shoulders onto Stiles’s legs and looked down at the suddenly red skin. He frowned and shook his hand despite the fact that the water had since dried into his skin, noticing now the slight specks in the threadbare carpet and the floor that wasn’t water but was ground up enough that it was difficult to tell what the real origin was until looking at the facts but the tingling and some of Derek’s symptoms made sense and it was an easy thing to sic on an alpha werewolf without having to be there and someone gave the man flowers on Valentine’s Day to do it.

And they said that werewolves were monsters, Stiles snarled to himself.

“Fucking wolfsbane!” Stiles gritted out between his teeth as he dialed for Lydia, she was their resident genius and had read almost as much literature on their supernatural pack as Stiles had, he didn’t want to do anything until he had a second opinion. While it was ringing, he hefted Derek up underneath his armpits and started moving the prone man away from the water floor and the broken vase. He realized a few seconds later that he was going to have to get Derek out of the clothes he was wearing, they were soaked in the water.

“Stiles, I have plans asshole,” Lydia said without preamble though somehow she still managed to sound sweet despite the cursing.

“Your alpha is sitting in the middle of a wolfsbane-invested pool of water, he’s unconscious and looks to be in some serious trouble. It reminds me more of when we were all dosed with it at your birthday party. How could he have ingested it if it was in the water?”

“You’re going to have to ask him genius,” Lydia snarked then sighed, “Get him cleaned off and into bed if you can, maybe even get him into a hot shower and have him breathe in the steam. It could help. I’m on my way, though a lot of the others won’t be able to help because it might still be in the air or something.”

“Uh huh,” he said though he didn’t think that was going to be too much of a problem, the way Derek was responding, it’s possible that whatever was in the flowers Derek got the main dose of it. “The door is wide open at the moment and I don’t care enough to go back. I’m heading to the bathroom.”

“Don’t fondle him too much,” Lydia chortled and Stiles sighed as he shut off the phone and dropped it on the bathroom counter which to be fair was a couple of milk crates stacked next to the industrial sink. The loft wasn’t really meant for comfort. It was something that he and Derek had been talking about, finding a place together that didn’t remind them of so much past crap. And now this.

He heaved Derek over to the toilet and dropped him slowly on the closed lid. He leaned into the shower and turned it to hot before he started taking the shirt off of Derek and he caught sight of the angry red skin on his back. He didn’t know what the dosage in the water was but it was enough to cause a reaction in a human so Derek’s skin must’ve been burning.

The only good thing was that Derek snapped up a little, coughing before he could do even open his eyes. Stiles held him up so Derek didn’t fall off the toilet. He didn’t think he could get the werewolf off of the floor in this cramped space.

“Derek? You with me man?” he asked as the coughing settled a little.

There was the black viscous fluid dripping from his lips and Stiles moved forward and pressed a hand to his cheek. Derek’s amazingly green eyes came up to match his then his boyfriend jerked back, “No,” he husked like it hurt too much to talk after the hacking up black shit – meaning that he breathed it in and didn’t ingest most of it which could be bad or good. “Sti—you don’ hafta leave.”

Stiles frowned, “Derek I’m not going anywhere. I’m right here.”

“You said—Stiles, you said,” Derek choked out and Stiles remembered the other thing from that night. He remembered seeing his dad, drunk and railing on about how it was his spastic son’s fault that Claudia was gone, something that no one had ever even known about—not even Scott. They had all hallucinated, even the werewolves. They had all seen things that they feared.

“No, Derek, someone attacked you. Ruined our first fucking Valentine’s Day and I am gonna kick some ass when I find out who. You breathed in wolfsbane, I think that’s what happened anyway.”

“You’re not…?”

“Going to leave? Hell no, I love you Derek ‘you won’t tell me your middle name’ Hale.”

The werewolf smiled tremulously and leaned over and started coughing again so Stiles pulled him up and they both climbed into the hot shower and stepped under the spray. He stayed there, helping to wash away the residue on his boyfriend’s angry skin while he puked up more of that black stuff and after a while Derek just leaned heavily into Stiles.

“Just breathe into the steam, breathe into your mouth,” he crooned into the side of Derek’s head. Listening as the coughing get less and less intense. He was left with sniffles and a listless sway as Stiles dragged him back out and rubbed him dry with fluffy towels that Stiles may or may not have smuggled into the loft when he started spending so much time here. He remembers Derek’s brows of doom then with a roll of his eyes, just walked away with a ‘I am not going to even try with you’ kind of gesture. Derek seemed to be pleased about it now, especially since a few spots on his back were actually starting to bleed, then heal then bleed. Stiles used some gauze to clean it up then left him without a shirt and instead wrapped him in the gauze that literally was here because Stiles had more than once tripped coming down the stairs or walking across the hard floor of the loft.

After that was done, he dragged off his own wet clothes and wrapped another towel around his slim waist so he could go get some clothes for both of them when suddenly someone tossed them into his arms and Stiles’s head snapped up to see Lydia’s exasperated features.

“Get dressed then we will get him dry and dressed, from what I understand about ingested wolfsbane, he is going to be sick and it’s going to come out but it’s going to take time. The healing will do its thing, he’s just going to be miserable.”

Stiles dressed while he listened pulling on the sweats with ease and efficiency since they were his. He’d had clothes at Derek’s place for over two months now. He grappled into his Captain America t-shirt and then moved to help Derek out of the rest of his clothes. He was aware enough to shift and move though he was still weak and coughing. Once he was redressed in sweats and a blanket around his shoulders, Lydia stepped in to help get them up the stairs and into the bed, grumbling the whole time about why he slept up here at all when there was a bathroom and everything else downstairs. “I mean why isn’t this an attic and just put your bed near the back in the alcove.”

“Come on Lyds, leave him alone. He’s had a shit day so far.”

Lydia just snorted and they settled the werewolf into his large bed and watched him forlornly as Derek slipped down into sleep again, he didn’t look like he was in the same mental agony that he’d been in before but it was still frightening to think all someone had to do was send Derek some goddamned flowers.

“Why did he bring them in anyway?” he asked no one though he should have known that Lydia was already on the case. She was playing with Derek’s phone, though he didn’t know where it came from and how she came to be holding it. “Why are you snooping on his phone?”

She shrugged, “It was on the table and he’s too sick currently to growl at me about it.”

“I’m going to growl at you about it!” Stiles returned, “Give it to me.”

“Did you send him this text?” she asked and handed him the phone.

Stiles stared down at the message and nodded with a frown, “Yeah why?”

“It’s pretty vague, maybe he got it before the flowers were delivered and he thought they were from you. Didn’t realize it until he was on the ground. I recall that wolfsbane can be pretty disorienting.”

“He probably still doesn’t realize it, its Valentine’s Day and I would be the only person sending him something. Maybe he thinks I did this to him,” Stiles screeched, causing Lydia to flinch and glare at him.

She turned and crossed her arms imperiously over her chest and spoke in a tone that said very clearly how much of a child he was being, “Listen you idiot, that werewolf is going to wake up soon enough and he’s going to feel pretty damn miserable and you are going to take care of him like he took care of you when you got sick a couple weeks ago.”

Stiles nodded because that’s what he was going to do anyway and he wasn’t going to argue with Lydia Martin when she was already here doing him a favor. “What do I do?”

“Do I have to do everything?” she groaned.

“Yup,” he said, popping his mouth theatrically on the ‘p’.

“Sit with him, use some steam therapy to help clear out the crap in his lungs and just stay close, in case someone else tries something while he’s down.”

“Tell the others, we need to figure out what happened here.”

She gave him a lazy salute then headed out, leaving Stiles alone with an unconscious boyfriend and no idea what to do to help. He sat there wondering if this was an opportunity, because Derek was always so strong, he dominated Stiles—not in a bad way, just in the ‘I’m an alpha werewolf and I don’t need no human to care for me’ kind of way. Stiles hated the idea that Derek was sick and hurting because some other lunatic had decided to pick on him again.

He settled down next to Derek on the bed, leaning against the wall to remain alert in case of some sort of sneak attack and started rubbing his fingers through Derek’s hair, he took a deep breath before he started talking, “I have learned so much about you Derek Hale, in the times that we have been enemies, then allies, then friends then more. Each and every single thing that I have learned about has made me love you more. You have the patience of a saint with Scott and the others, you are kind and loving when the betas are with you. Especially when it stopped being about survival and started being about pack. You have the backstory a supervillain would kill for because then everyone would get it. I would have got it if you turned out like Peter, because you were so hurt by so many people and you didn’t turn to the dark side, you stood up to those in front of you. I remember all those times you said kill it, it’s dangerous but you know what else I remember—you never killed any of those ‘monsters’. You did what you had to so you could be protected but you laid down your life so many times for people like me and Scott and the others. I couldn’t leave you if I tried, ya know. I love you too much.”

The whole time he talked, he just kept constant contact with Derek’s head or swooped his hand through his soft hair. Then he reached over to the little bedside table and opened the second drawer where he kept some of his stuff and pulled out the red thread that he used for his investigative boards and wrapped some of it around his left pinky and left a couple of feet between his loop and the other one that he quickly made in the thread and placed it over Derek’s left pinky and cut off the access and smiled at the haphazard circles and loops of the thread over Derek’s stomach and chest.

“I would never let you miss me proposing to you so rest assured that is coming at some point because I can’t freaking handle a life where you and I aren’t together no matter what but I want you to know that the red string of fate is a thing, this isn’t just me being weird, I mean that’s part of it because you’re asleep and you can’t even here me but I digress. I don’t know if I have blathered on about this or not but there is this story in multiple cultures about the red string. That it can be placed around the pinky of someone who will be fated to be close or important to you and there is no one more important to me than you. I mean, there’s Scott and my dad but you Derek, you have this red piece of strong around my heart and that’s never going to stop so just don’t go okay?”

Derek murmured something in his sleep, like he was coming out of the resting sleep that he needed so Stiles soothed him gently back down for a few minutes then grabbed one of the many books that Derek kept strewn about his bedroom and started reading.

 

It took another half hour before Derek started shifting on the bed and coming back to alertness, coming awake with some more coughing and more black stuff but there was a marked difference in the amount and what his coughing sounded like. It wasn’t like the plague anymore, it was a little more like he breathed water down the wrong pipe.

Stiles sighed and leaned in a little closer, “Derek, how you feeling man?”

He struggled a little before he leaned back against the wall behind the head of the bed. He shifted just enough to look at Stiles, “What happened?”

Derek still sounded like a 60 year old lifetime smoker but he was alert and he was looking at Stiles with enough wariness that the younger man figured his boyfriend didn’t remember much from the bathroom, maybe he still believed hallucination!Stiles. Then he caught sight of the red out of the corner of his gaze and stared down at it with adorable confusion.

“The red string of fate,” he stated and Derek scrunched up his nose then coughed again. “I told you all about it but you were sleeping.”

Derek rolled his eyes, “Stiles what are you doing here?”

“It’s Valentine’s Day and we had a date. Then some weirdo jackass had to fuck it up by sending you evil flowers. I thought about flowers but you didn’t seem the kind of guy to think that was okay. I have stuff for you and dinner is burnt but I’m here. We’re together and no one can keep me from you.” Derek looked down at the red strong, picking at the end and Stiles started getting anxious. He started bouncing his hand, making the red thread dance across the bed, “Unless you want me to go?”

Derek reached out and grabbed Stiles’s hand, not letting him go anywhere even as he shook his head, more of a little jiggly than anything. “No, I just thought you were leaving me because I get everyone I love killed. It’s my fault and you said that you couldn’t let your dad go through that and I knew you were right.”

Stiles scoffed, “Derek I know you don’t feel fantastic right now but I gotta tell you something.” He paused for dramatic effect, making Derek’s lip curl a little in annoyance before he declared, “Don’t be a dumbass.”

“I’m a dumbass? You’re a dumbass for staying with someone who was at the center of multiple tragedies, that he helped along to its disturbing conclusion because I didn’t know when I was being manipulated.”

“You think I’m manipulating you?” Stiles whispered brokenly because he didn’t know what was happening right now.

“No, of course not but I am being selfish. You should go while you still can.”

Stiles scooted over in the bed, close enough that he could pull Derek’s head over onto his shoulder and just gently ran his hands through the werewolf’s hair, scratching gently at his scalp. “I can’t go anywhere, that boat sailed a long time ago.”

“Why?” Derek grumped, wrapping a hand around Stiles’s other wrist though he didn’t shove him away.

“Because I love you, I have loved you for longer than I can remember and there is nothing that could make me leave you.”

Derek tilted his head back enough that he could make eye contact with Stiles and the shimmer of tears were enough to bring Stiles down to kiss him gently on the forehead before he leaned down enough to kiss Derek on the mouth. When he moved back a fraction of an inch, Derek whispered, “You’re an idiot but you’re my idiot and I love you Stiles.”

Stiles grinned and leaned down for another kiss that was quickly interrupted by some more coughing so Stiles helped the ailing werewolf to lay back down but he stayed close. He helped Derek into a steaming shower again, listening to the hacking coughs from the closed toilet, flinching at the sound until Derek slumped out of the shower and they got him back into bed.

Stiles tucked in his boyfriend, looking at the clock which read 11:58 so he turned back to Derek and pressed another kiss to the side of Derek’s head and whispered, “Happy Valentine’s Sourwolf.”

“To the first of many right?” Derek whispered sappily and Stiles loved it.

“First of so freaking many we are going to lose count. I love you Derek, you can make it up to me about dinner.”

“I will,” Derek scoffed, “Love you too.”

It was another hour and a half before one of the other pack members texted him to say they scared the witch out of town and she wasn’t coming after Derek again, especially knowing he was protected with a mate. It was too complicated for 1:30 AM.

“So someone was just fucking with him because she thought he was alone?”

Lydia sighed, “Yeah, how’s he doing?”

“Resting,” Stiles said with a little smile and he brushed his hand over Derek’s forehead. “He saw me leaving him Lyds, that I said that no one would ever want him because of what happened to him. He’s afraid of it happening!”

“Then show him that it’s not going to happen,” she responded, annoyed that she has to _do everything_ for Stiles.

“How do I do that?”

Lydia groaned then she hung up, Stiles rolled his eyes and went back to holding Derek close and waiting for him to wake up again. He knew that words weren’t enough, Kate had words for Derek and Peter had words for Derek and they had all done so much to hurt him. Stiles opened up his internet browser and started looking up information on the bestiary which they had transferred into a Cloud system a long time ago as well as everything they’d learned about werewolves that _weren’t_ from hunters because a lot of that information was gleaned through horrible means and it was from the perspective of people who believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that werewolves were nothing more than monsters.

Derek wasn’t a monster. Derek was a man, a loving and beautiful broken man who just happened to be a werewolf too. One who deserved to be happy and Stiles was going to do everything in his power to make that happen.

 

Derek woke up again to Stiles pacing around the side of the bed and he took a deep breath and inventory of his aches and pains. The ache in his throat was gone and his body was achey but nothing more than normal.

“Stiles,” he whispered after a moment. His boyfriend turned too quickly and he tripped. Derek jerked forward, trying to catch the lovable idiot before he brained himself on something but Stiles caught himself and smiled. Derek smiled softly at the grin because it was without a doubt, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen and he gets to wake up to it frequently.

“You’re awake, I was waiting. I have a surprise; do you feel up to coming downstairs?”

Derek looked around and realized that it was light outside, he must have been able to sleep through the night and heal the rest of the way. He sat up and stretched, flexing his muscles which distracted Stiles for a moment. Derek enjoyed watching the way those honey brown eyes glazed over as he stood up. Derek looked down and was glad to see he had on sweat at least though he barely remembered them being put on in the first place. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and Stiles was there to help him to his feet then they were walking downstairs and Derek caught sight of the table. There was a dark red tablecloth on it, two paper plates because Derek didn’t have a lot of actual plates or silverware. There was food and a card and a box of candy, Derek smiled because Stiles was trying to be something he so totally wasn’t.

“What’s all this?”

“Look I know it’s a day late and a dollar short—do people still say that? Anyway… Happy Valentine’s day love.”

Derek sat down at the table and grinned at his boyfriend, “Thank you Stiles. Thank you for kissing me six months ago and for kissing me every day since then. Thank you for always being there, even before we were a thing. Thank you, Stiles, ‘I-know-that’s-not-your-real-name’ Stilinski.”

Stiles grinned, sat down and said, “Mieczyslaw.”

“Excuse me?” Derek asked, surprised because he hadn’t really expected that at all.

“My name is Mieczyslaw Genim Stilinski, I want you to know everything about me. Forever.”

Derek smiled, his mouth hurting a little at the stretch, “Mieczyslaw?”

They go back and forth, figuring out the pronunciation for a few minutes and Stiles grinned the whole time, “Scott and my dad are the only other people who know. And now you.”

“My middle name is Patrick, after my dad,” Derek whispered after a second. “I refused to acknowledge it for a long time because I miss him so much some days. My mom refused to have a Junior in the family, the middle name was a compromise which is something my mother was never really good at.”

“Well I am glad to know another piece of you which is why,” he said as he got up and knelt next to Derek in his chair who stared down at him in shock.

“Stiles, what are you doing?”

“Shut up, I have a speech.”

“Of course you do,” Derek said with a roll of his eyes as Stiles reached out and pulled something from his pocket, a flash of red before he gripped Derek’s left hand in his right, “I know you don’t really know this yet and maybe I am just being an idiot here. That is a genuine possibility but I need you to know that I have been in love with you a long time, before we ever kissed or went on dates. I have loved you. I loved your heart and spirit, your desire to do what is needed for the sake of your pack. Mostly I just want to be with you for the rest of our lives so I am running a little experiment here. Will you promise to stay with me, let me show you all the ways that I care and would never leave. Will you wear something to signify this desire to enter into this experiment with me?”

At that Derek looked down at the string, it was looped into a ring and there were multiple threads braided together. He looked back into those brown eyes and smiled, “You and your experiments. Is this my future? To run them with you?”

“If you want it to be?” Stiles asked, starting to sound anxious so Derek put him out of his misery.

“I would love to run this experiment with you.”

Stiles slipped the red ring onto Derek’s left ring finger, then pushed upright enough to press a messy amazing kiss into Derek’s lips. He opened to his boyfriend’s tongue and he dragged Stiles into his lap for a tight squeeze and another kiss. Stiles wrapped his legs awkwardly around Derek’s waist and the back of chair. Derek grinned into the side of Stiles’s neck, taking in the scent of happiness and love. There was never a class on what those things smelled like but he remembered it from his mother and his father, layered in with Stiles’s personal scent as well as the life-affirming presence of his own. Stiles always smelled a little like Derek now, it made his wolf content.

He couldn’t believe that Stiles knew enough about him to not propose marriage but make this into a commitment that he didn’t fear as much. Marriage was something you did later in the relationship, but Stiles wanted to let him know in a way that Derek could accept that he had no intention of leaving him.

“You know, for a guy who doesn’t know anything about romancing a guy, you did pretty amazing for our first Valentine’s Day.”

“You too Sourwolf,” Stiles leaned back and stated with a grin.

Derek slowly fed them both, nesting a little with the younger man. He wanted to care for Stiles and he was letting the wolf do it. Maybe they started out as enemies, maybe they had fought more in the beginning than any other people in the world but now—now they were a team.

Stiles lifted his glass of juice and handed the other one to Derek and clinked them together, “To the first of many Valentine’s Days together.”

“To the first of many Stiles.”

 

 

THE END


End file.
